Harvard Square Library

Great American Events-Universalists

AMOS GAGER THROOP

FOUNDER OF CALTECH

FROM CALTECH’S ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE

BY ROMY WYLLIE

Arthur Amos Noyes, Robert Andrews Millikan, George Ellery Hale. This portrait by

Seymour Thomas hangs in the main dining room of Caltech’s Athenaeum.

Throop Garden, 1985. The 40 authentic boulders at the Throop site are identified on a plaque. But

Professor Silver says “there are some mysterious rocks that I don’t understand. These will be a

challenge for our geology students, and ultimately, some of them will solve the mystery.” Every

first year geology class makes a field trip through the gardens to find “books in the running

brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

Romy Wyllie is an interior designer and co-founder of the architectural

tour service at the California Institute of Technology for which she was

named an Honorary Alumna. She previously taught architectural history

and interior design at the Harrington Institute of Interior Design in

Chicago. For six years she was managing editor of the Journal of

Geology at the University of Chicago. Pursuing her interest in Bertram

Goodhue, Caltech’s master architect, Wyllie wrote Bertram Goodhue:

His Life and Residential Architecture, which was published by W. W.

Norton in 2007. Her articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times,

Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, and The

New Republic.

Caltech’s Architectural Heritage: From Spanish Tile to Modern Stone

Published by Balcony Press, Los Angeles

! 2000 Romy Wyllie

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the

case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-073707

ISBN: 1-890449-05-9

The only way to purchase NEW copies of the book is through the Caltech Bookstore:

http://www.caltechstore.caltech.edu

romy@caltech.edu

Haruard Square LibraryG reat Am e rican Events- U n iversalsfs Serlrgs

Amos G. Throop and Galtech

One educational institution which began at least theoretically "underthe patronage and control of Universalists" but which soon lost both itsdenominational character and its original purpose was ThroopPolytechnic Institute in Pasadena, California. It was the brief andimperfect fruition of a dream expressed by the California StateConvention which in 1860 encouraged the establishment of a combinedcollege and theological school to serve the denomination on the Pacificcoast. Nothing came of the plan, but the dream did become at least apartial reality at the end of the nineteenth century. The personresponsible was Amos G. Throop (1811-1894), a wealthy businessmanand active Universalist layman who moved to the West Coast fromChicago in 1880.

Throop was born in Madison County, New York, in 1811, and spendhis boyhood on a farm. He moved to Michigan in 1832, where he engaged in the lumberingbusiness which became the basis fora substantial fortune. In 1843, he located in Chicago, where heprospered as a businessman specializing in real estate and become active in local civic affairs. Heserved on the City Council from 1849 to 1853, and between 1876and lS80,wassufficientlywellknown as an alderman to have had a street named after him. He was also a charter member andofficer of the Chicago Board of Trade. While residing in Chicago he was a member of the Churchof the Redeemer (Universalist) and was one of the three lay delegates to the General Conventionfrom Illinois in 1862.

Throop enlarged his holdings by investments in California where he lived first in Los Angeles andthen in Pasadena, beginning in 1887. He was a major contributor to Universalist organizations. Heprovided $200,000 and a site for what was known originally as Throop University. The original

board of fifteen trustees, of whom two were women, consisted

largely if not entirely of Universalists. The coeducational schoolopened in the fall of 1891, advertised ambitiously as acombined preparatory school, liberal arts college, law school,art school, and technical school providing teacher, business, andmanual taining. James H. Tuttle, pastor of the largestUniversalist church in Minneapolis, who spent many ofhiswinters in Pasadena, was to head the new school.

The institution in 1892 enrolled sixty-five students, with plansto spread over eight divisions including such diversedepartments as the collegiate and one for the industrial trainingof women, which included sewing and cooking classes. Thepresident was Charles H. Keyes from Wisconsin rather than

Tuttle, who was reluctant to relinquish his pastorate in Minneapolis. Sixteen other individualscomprised the faculty. The manual training department, which became the most numerouslypopulated segment of the "university," was opened in September 1892 with 171 students in a leasedforty-room facility known as the "Wooster Block." A building known as "Polytechnic Hall" waserected the same year and in 1893 another building was added. In the same year the school became"Throop Polytechnic Institute," with an enrollment of 175. The curriculum included such disparatepractical subjects as stenography, typewriting, cooking, botany, biology, and carpentry.

The institution continued to exist and to bear his name long after Throop's death in 1894. It becameprimarily a technical and trade school, and in 1914 was renamed "Throop College of Technology."ln 1920 the name of the founder was dropped and the school became the California lnstitute ofTechnology (known popularly as "Cal Tech"). The individual who saw the possibilities oftransforming Throop College into a major center of scientific and engineering research was GeorgeEllery Hale, an astronomer who established the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Pasadena. Togetherwith Arthur Amos Noyes, a chemist, and Robert Andrews Millikan, a physicist, Hale arranged forthe change of name and a revised curriculum. Although not offrcially created as a denominationallycontrolled school, what had evolved as a vocational school and later as a distinguished university,represented another contribution of Universalists to American educational diversity.

A Universalist Church was, however, organized in Pasadena in 1886 as a visible reminder ofThroop's generosity by way of a gift of $16,000 in 1890. The Universalists never established thetheological training facility envisaged by Throop, but ten years after his death the Pacific UnitarianSchool of the Ministry was established. The school, which later became the Thomas Star KingSchool for Religious Leadership, provided the preparation for clergy in the liberal church.

Abridged from: The Larger Hope: The Second Century of the Universalist Church in America 1870-1970by Russell E. Miller, 1985.

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